Bread not bullets: Ukraine’s locals and soldiers against war

As we saw the crowds gathering round the Ukrainian armoured personnel carriers parked near the railway tracks in Kramatorsk we thought we might encounter a hostile crowd.

But in fact the atmosphere was peaceful. “We don’t want war” said a man called Ruslan who spoke English. “That’s why we don’t want them to come into the town.”

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They were keen to show us a white Opal saloon car that had been partially crushed by an APC. As we were filming it we heard the roar of another armoured vehicle hurtling along towards us.

The people started whistling and shouting. When the vehicle stopped they linked arms to prevent it from proceeding any further.

One man said to me: “Look they’re pointing weapons at us.” But in fact the soldiers seemed more bemused than aggressive.

They clearly did not want to aggravate the people. Some people started to talk to them, asking “Why are you here? What are you doing?”

We looked over at the crushed saloon car and saw that two policeman in blue uniforms were making a routine report as if there had been a minor traffic accident. Nothing can stop bureaucracy, not even the threat of war.

There are 2 comments on this post

Nice report Lindsey, how amazing to see the invading force doing an exhibition of wheelies in their tanks for the people handing out food and the local police taking details of a traffic accident when a tank crushes a car. The whole thing would be so funny, if it were not so deadly frightening. It will take just a loose cannon to shoot at pro-Russian protestors to kick the whole thing off and I heard a report that this has happened tonight but it’s unconfirmed. The Ron Paul Institute in the US are saying that NATO is desperate to crank this thing up into a war with Russia and by the way they are deploying so much hardware in the Baltic and around Russia’s borders, they are going the right way to do just that, with their provocative actions. If what has been reported is true, I only hope and pray that the Ukrainian troops will not deliver the East back to Kiev and that peace will ensue through diplomatic means.